Thursday, April 10, 2008

Hugh

One of the questions that I hear a lot as a volunteer marine mammal trainer is how do we teach the sea otters, seals and sea lions to do all the neat behaviors that they see during a presentation and how can they get their own pets to behave so well.

Well, if I were to start talking about operant conditioning, stimulus-response, BF Skinner, discriminative stimulus, primary and secondary reinforcement, least reinforcing scenario and variable and non-variable reinforcement I usually end up getting a lot of blank stares back. So I’ve learned to put it in more personal terms.

Here in a nutshell is how to train an animal—Make it a happy experience when an animal does what you want them to do and don’t give any feedback when they don’t. Give a positive reaction for a behavior done correctly and don’t give any reaction (sort of a mini time-out) when they behave incorrectly. In marine mammal training we call it using positive reinforcement.

For many animals its food that makes them happy. For instance, our sea otters are very food motivated. They will do just about anything to get their tasty clam reward. So when they do a behavior correctly like placing their paw on a target pole when asked, they receive a clam as a reward. It reinforces the desired behavior. However for some animals, other things like a pat on the head or a favorite toy may be used as a reward. I once knew a bomb sniffing dog whose favorite reward for finding explosive material was to be allowed to play with her favorite rubber ducky. Yes a rubber ducky! Even the fun of the training session itself can be a reward for the animal. Parker the sea lion is a prime example of this. He loves to work with his trainers even when he’s not hungry.

Sometimes it may be awkward or impossible to get the reward to an animal exactly when they do the behavior you want (it would be difficult to toss a fish to a sea lion that’s in the middle of a back flip), so you have to have some way of bridging the time between when the correct behavior was done and when the reward is given. With our marine mammals we can use a whistle as a bridge to let the animal know that it has done something correctly and that their reward will follow. We teach this bridge early in their training by blowing the whistle whenever we hand a fish to the animal. They soon associate the whistle with the food (think Pavlov’s dogs) and react positively when they hear it. They’ve learned that when they hear a whistle that they have done something correctly and that a reward will follow. The timing of the bridge is also important. If you are training Parker the sea lion to leap high out of the water you want to blow your whistle when the jump is highest. If you give the bridge while Parker is still going up, he will interpret the correct behavior as just the leap itself. If you give the bridge when he is on his way down, he will think that the fall is what you want. By bridging at the top of the leap, you let him know that the height of the jump is the behavior you want (we call this the criteria of the behavior).

An important thing to keep in mind when you are training an animals is that you don’t want to make the training session itself frustrating for the animal so it best to take baby steps with the critter you are training and break down the behavior you want to teach down into smaller behaviors that can more easily be rewarded. Keep the sessions positive. The first baby step I used in training our blind seal Ellie to retrieve a ball was actually having her touch the ball or ring held in my hand that I splashed next to her. From there I used baby steps to train her to find and push the objects back to me and then gradually increased the distance of the retrievals. Each small success could be rewarded and built on each other. You should also make sure that the hand and voice signals you give the animal to perform the behavior are consistent from session to session so as not to confuse the animal about what you are asking for. Never set up an animal for failure by making a step too hard or confusing thus frustrating the animal and always try to end a training session on a positive note like asking for a simple behavior that an animal can do easily for a reward.

Another training consideration that you also want to make sure of is that the actions and environment surrounding the behavior being trained are neutral or positive experiences. For example, you don’t want to teach a dog how to walk on a leash by suddenly snapping the leash on the dog and pulling the confused animal along a busy street filled with scary cars and trucks. If you did you just associated the leash itself with an unpleasant experience. You first want to introduce the leash gradually and as part of a pleasant experience like feeding or play time or perhaps a pat on the head.

To give an example, I once taught a rabbit to walk on a leash out in public. Wanting to take our pet rabbit Buster with us on a road trip to my wife’s home town in Kansas, I decided to train the bunny to walk on a leash using the training skills I had acquired working with the Aquarium of the Pacific’s seals and sea lions. That way Buster didn’t have to stay in her kennel all the way to Wellington. She could stretch her paws when we stopped to stretch our legs. First I had to figure out what I could use as a reward for Buster doing what I wanted. Buster was not a food motivated animal. What she did enjoy was a rub on her head so I used that as her reinforcement. To bridge the gap between when she did something I wanted and Buster getting her head rubbed, I used the word “Good” as a bridge. I would say “Good” every time I would rub her head. She soon associated the word with the positive experience of her head being rubbed. I then broke down the behavior I wanted to train into smaller steps. I first placed the harness that I eventually wanted to strap on Buster nearby on the ground during the times that I would give her a rub on her head. Later I would lay the harness on her for short periods, all the while reinforcing her calmness around the harness. Eventually she got used to me actually strapping the harness on her for extended period. Only when she was completely use to the harness did I actually attach the leash to it. From there we went back to baby steps which eventually led to her gradual introduction to walking with me while on the leash-first in a quiet public park and then later on a busy bike path at the beach where I reinforced her calmness around people and bikes.

While knowing the steps to train an animal is important, it’s just as important to have a bit of knowledge about the animal’s Natural History. In my bunny scenario&mdashA hare like a jackrabbit has the first instincts to quickly hop away from a threat. A rabbit like Buster who was part brush rabbit and part domesticated rabbit; however, has a different threat response than its cousin the hare. Rabbits will actually huddle still under brushes and other objects to hide when a threat is near, using their jumping abilities to escape only as a last resort. Thus I knew that when Buster got real nervous she would huddle around my legs and I could respond by reassuring her and calming her down. If I didn’t know this fact about rabbits, I might not have taken notice of her nervousness and she could have tried to bolt away from her perceived threat while on the leash and injured herself.

How long did it take to train a rabbit to calmly walk on a leash? Unlike sea lions, rabbits have a very short attention span so I only trained her in short 5 minute sessions once or twice a day depending on my schedule. All in all it took about 10 weeks from introduction of the harness to confidently walking out in public. One of our practice walks involved a humorous story. I was walking Buster on her leash along the beach when an upset looking lifeguard came toward us while angrily pointing at a sign on a post. When he got closer he did a double take and then started to laugh. What had happened was when he saw me with an animal on a leash he assumed it was a small dog and was pointing to the NO DOGS ALLOWED ON BEACH sign. I guess because the sign didn’t say anything about rabbits, he allowed us to continue our beach walk. When Buster finally made her trip to Kansas she was a well trained animal companion.

Just because you don’t have a handy sea lion around doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun training animals. Any critter can be trained as long as you know what makes it happy!

The whistle in Caitlin's hand is used as a bridge to let Parker know that he is doing his layout behavior correctly.
| Hugh RyonoBuster; the rabbit that I trained to walk on a leash using marine mammal training techniques taking a stroll on the sand in Redondo Beach California. I guess you could call her a "Beach Bunny".
| Hugh RyonoAny animal can be trained as long as you know what makes it happy. In the case of Buster the rabbit, a pat on her head tells her that she doing the behavior correctly. Here Buster and I take a walk on the beach.
| Pam RyonoEven a fish can be trained. On a whim I trained my old goldfish Mr. Limpet to target his nose on my finger when prompted.
| Hugh Ryono

Your Comments

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Josie

Friday, April 11, 2008 10:29 AM

Hugh, this was a great read! Thanks a bunch for all the intersting information. Training animals sounds both like a lot of work and something that actually is quite simple. And it sounds like you have a lot of fun in the process, both animal and human, since nothing negative is introduced. Good job!

Hugh

Friday, April 11, 2008 11:26 PM

Hi Josie,

The neat thing about training an animal using positive reinforcement is the bond that you form with the critter you are working with. Since animal and human are both working for a goal that’s going to make both of them happy ( a fish for the sea lion, a well done behavior for the trainer), it does become a joyous pursuit.

Hugh

vanessa

Monday, April 14, 2008 01:04 PM

cool how to train seals

Hugh

Monday, April 14, 2008 05:25 PM

Hi Vanessa,

I think it’s cool how quickly the seals and sea lions figure out what we are asking for. Neat animals.

Thanks for your comment.

Hugh

Anitza

Wednesday, April 16, 2008 12:35 PM

I can’t believe that I had yet to comment on my favorite entry.

It is so neat and I love how you can explain this whole process that, while in its most basic ways is quite simple, still takes a lot of work and dedication (10 weeks for your rabbit!). I have a feeling that a lot of people who would try to take on an endeavor like training a pet would normally give up if they didn’t get practically instant results. It is nice to see that the pros don’t just utter a magic word and voila! the wanted behavior is done! :D

Hugh

Wednesday, April 16, 2008 04:43 PM

Hi Anitza,

Profound observation. While sometimes a bright trained animal like Ellie the harbor seal or Parker the sea lion may pick up a new behavior in a session or two, most of the time patience is needed while training a critter. In fact, that is the “magic” word when it comes to training—-Patience!

Hugh

Melinda

Saturday, April 19, 2008 03:10 PM

Great read! I’ve got a question for you. When training dogs, I’ve used some of the same techniques and a lot of them have to do with utilizing the animal’s natural behaviours. One thing I have noticed though, is that sometimes training a dog to do one thing by motivating his natural instincts can also create or reinforce some behaviours that I don’t want, e.g. training their instinct to track with the intention of having them track humans can also stimulate their desire and concentration to track things they really shouldn’t, i.e. wild animals. Does this sort of thing occur with sea lions as well?

Hugh

Monday, April 21, 2008 06:37 PM

Hi Melinda,

Part of training is dealing with the animal’s natural instincts. One of the most important aspects of training sea lions is what we call manners training. We reward animals for being calm and focussed in a situation where normally they wouldn’t be.

An example would be having a sea lion stay calm around another sea lion being fed. The natural instinct of the sea lion is to try to get the fish being fed to the other sea lion. What we do to train “manners” is that if the sea lion stays calm while the other is being fed, the animal is “Jackpotted” later with a lot of fish at once. This way the animal learns that by controlling its instinct and remaining calm while another sea lion is being fed it will be rewarded with a larger quantity of fish.

Another way that we train manners is to simply reward an animal for remaining calm between behaviors. We will bridge and reward a sea lion for simply staying focussed on its trainer.

As for your dogs tracking humans and wild animals—-If we are training a sea lion and it picks up an unwanted behavior within a behavior, we will actually go back to baby steps and work the behavior to criteria again from the beginning while taking note on where the animal might have been confused on what we wanted.

Another step you might try is to de-sense the dog to distractions. One thing you can do with your dogs is to actually introduce another animal (like a rabbit in a kennel) within the training session and start rewarding the dog for ignoring the animal and tracking the human. The first baby step you might want to try is to have the kennel with the animal inside near the dog during a training session and simply reward it for keeping its focus on you and not the kennel. Manners training for the dog. From there you can rework the behavior so that only humans are tracked.

Good luck with your dog training!

Hugh

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